Supreme Court decisionshttp://www.pfaw.org/
Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:18:00 -0400Mon, 07 Jul 2014 10:32:14 -0400Samuel Alito: A Movement Man Makes Good On Right-Wing Investmentshttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/samuel-alito-movement-man-makes-good-right-wing-investments
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<p><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-montgomery/samuel-alito-a-movement-m_b_5555428.html">Huffington Post Politics</a>.</em></p>
<p>Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ended this Supreme Court session with a bang, writing the majority&nbsp; opinion in two cases that gave for-profit corporations the right to make religious liberty claims to evade government regulation and set the stage for the fulfillment of a central goal of the right-wing political movement: the destruction of public employee unions.</p>
<p>Neither of the decisions were particularly surprising. Samuel Alito is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/business/pro-business-decisions-are-defining-this-supreme-court.html?_r=0">the single most pro-corporate Justice</a> on <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/citizens-united-era-how-supreme-court-continues-put-business-first">the most pro-business Court since the New Deal</a>. Still, Alito&rsquo;s one-two punch was another extraordinary milestone for the strategists who have been working for the past 40 years to put business firmly in the driver&rsquo;s seat of American politics.</p>
<p>Many would suggest that the modern right-wing movement began with the failed presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. But there&rsquo;s a strong case to be made that it begins in earnest with <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/issues/government-people/edit-memo-take-back-constitution-corporate-court">a 1971 memo by Lewis Powell</a>, who argued that American businesses were losing public support and called for a massive, continuing campaign to wage war on leftist academics, progressive nonprofit groups, and politicians. The memo by Powell, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court via a nomination by Richard Nixon, inspired a few very wealth men like Adolph Coors, John M. Olin, and Richard Mellon Scaife, who set about <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/buying-movement">creating and funding a massive infrastructure</a> of think tanks, endowed academic chairs, law schools and right-wing legal groups, including the Federalist Society, which has nurtured Alito&rsquo;s career.</p>
<p>Chief among the right-wing movement&rsquo;s tactics has been building sufficient political power to achieve ideological dominance over the federal judiciary. As activists like Richard Viguerie recruited foot soldiers to help win elections for the GOP, <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/the-federalist-society-from-obscurity-to-power">the Federalist Society built the intellectual foundations for an extreme conservative legal movement</a> that would gain traction when its members won confirmation to the federal bench. That process began in earnest during the Reagan administration and reached new heights during the George W. Bush administration with the ascendance to the Supreme Court of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.</p>
<p>Samuel Alito was, is, and always has been a man of the movement, an ideological warrior with a clear set of goals. His commitment to achieving those goals by any means available to him is reflected in his record in the Reagan Justice Department, the White House Office of Legal Counsel, as an appeals court judge, and now as a Supreme Court justice, where he is helping to wage a legal counterrevolution aimed at reversing hard-won advances protecting workers, the environment, and the rights of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBT people.</p>
<p>He remains an active part of the political and legal movement that shepherded his rise to power. The Federalist Society&rsquo;s Leonard Leo steered Alito&rsquo;s Supreme Court nomination through the White House and Senate. Alito has returned the favor, participating in numerous <a href="http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/justice-alito-flouts-ethical-standards.html">events</a> for the Federalist Society even after he became a member of the Supreme Court. He has shown no concern about positioning himself as part of the movement, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/17/justice-alito-defends-high-court-2010-decision-in-citizens-united-case/">telling</a> listeners at a Federalist Society dinner in 2012 that the Obama administration is promoting a vision of society &ldquo;in which the federal government towers over people.&rdquo; He has also helped raise funds at events for the right-wing American Spectator Magazine (where he <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2008/12/05/justice-alito-pokes-fun-of-biden-at-dinner/">mocked</a> VP-elect Joe Biden), the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/justice_samuel_alito_why_he_s_so_rude.html">Manhattan Institute</a>.</p>
<p>Alito&rsquo;s class at Princeton was the last all-male class at the university, and when Alito was angling for a promotion within the Reagan-Meese Justice Department in 1985, he bragged that he was a &ldquo;proud member&rdquo; of Conservative Alumni of Princeton, a group that aggressively fought the university&rsquo;s efforts to diversify its student body by accepting more women and people of color. (He developed a surprisingly thorough amnesia on the topic between his Justice Department days and his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.)</p>
<p>At the Justice Department, Alito was part of a team that pushed to limit civil rights protections and advance a right-wing legal ideology. Even in that hothouse of right-wing activism, he was an outlier, unsuccessfully trying to push Ronald Reagan to veto an uncontroversial bill against odometer fraud on the grounds of federalism. Alito argued that it is not the job of the federal government to protect the &ldquo;health, safety, and welfare&rdquo; of Americans. He continued to push that kind of federalism argument as a judge, dissenting from a ruling that upheld a federal law restricting the sale of machine guns. On the Third Circuit Court of Appeals he was often the lone dissenter staking out far-right interpretations of the law that consistently sacrificed the rights and interests of individuals to powerful corporate or other institutions.</p>
<p>Among the right-wing movement&rsquo;s key long-term goals &mdash;&nbsp;from the Nixon era up until today &mdash;&nbsp;has been to rig the system to prevent progressives from being able to win elections and exercise political influence. They have sought to &ldquo;defund the left&rdquo; by starving government agencies and progressive nonprofits of funds and by weakening or destroying organized labor, which is a crucial source of funding and organizing efforts for progressive causes and candidates. For example, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-michigan-labor-politics-gop?page=2">the DeVos family pushed anti-union &ldquo;right to work&rdquo; legislation</a> in their home state of Michigan, and &nbsp;the Koch brothers and their political networks have poured massive resources into the political arm of the movement, exemplified by politicians who, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, are hell-bent on the destruction of public employee unions. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Alito&rsquo;s recent decision in the <em>Harris v. Quinn</em> case was just the latest step towards that goal. In that case, Alito and his conservative colleagues invented a new employee classification in order to declare that one class of workers paid by the state are not subject to the same labor laws as other public employees. The decision was prefigured in a 2012 case, &nbsp;<em>Knox v. SEIU</em>, &nbsp;in which Alito led an attack on unions by deciding to answer a question that had not even come before them in the case. In essence, he and the other conservative justices argued that a system that allows workers to opt out of assessments for unions&rsquo; political work was suddenly unconstitutional, and required an opt-in. Justice Sotomayor slammed the Alito decision for ruling on an issue which the SEIU had not even been given an opportunity to address. That kind of right-wing activism moved People For the American Way Foundation&rsquo;s Paul Gordon to <a href="http://blog.pfaw.org/content/court-s-conservatives-join-right-wing-attack-unions">write</a> that the Court&rsquo;s conservative judges &ldquo;might as well have taken off their judicial robes and donned Scott Walker T-shirts in their zeal to make it harder for unions to protect workers.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In his <em>Harris</em> decision, Alito went out of his way to invite right-wing legal groups to bring a more far-reaching case, one that would finally give him and his pro-business colleagues an opportunity to take a sledgehammer to public employee unions by eliminating, in the name of the First Amendment, the requirement (specifically upheld by the Supreme Court over 30 years ago) that workers benefitting from a collective bargaining agreement help pay for the costs of negotiating that kind of agreement. That would devastate union financing, sharply limiting their ability to protect their members and potentially setting up a death spiral as fewer employees would see the benefits of joining (and paying dues to) the unions.&nbsp; Not coincidentally, this would also severely weaken the progressive political organizations and parties that unions have long supported. Movement conservatives have long looked forward to checking that off their &ldquo;to do&rdquo; list.</p>
<p>Alito&rsquo;s determination to re-write federal law in ways that strengthen corporate power and undermine workers&rsquo; rights was also on display a few years earlier, when he wrote an indefensible opinion &mdash;&nbsp;joined by his conservative colleagues &mdash;&nbsp;in <em>Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company</em>. Alito ignored judicial precedent, common sense, and the clear purpose of the law in order to create an unreasonable deadline for making a pay discrimination claim, one that would be insurmountable for someone who was not immediately aware that they were being discriminated against. Lilly Ledbetter, a loyal Goodyear employee who learned she had been paid less than male colleagues for years, was, in the words of law professor and PFAW Foundation Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin, &ldquo;judicial roadkill along the highway in the majority&rsquo;s campaign to restrict, rewrite, and squash anti-discrimination law.&rdquo; Alito also wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in <a href="http://blog.pfaw.org/content/bad-news-workers-supreme-courts-vance-case">last year&rsquo;s <em>Vance v. Ball State </em>decision</a>, which made it easier for companies to avoid liability in discrimination cases by declaring that someone who directs an employee&rsquo;s day-to-day activities doesn&rsquo;t count as a &ldquo;supervisor&rdquo; unless they have power to take &ldquo;tangible employment actions&rdquo; against them like firing them. As in the Ledbetter case, Alito ignored how workplaces really work in order to reach his result.</p>
<p>In <em>Hobby Lobby</em>, the other blockbuster case this week, Alito wrote a decision declaring, for the first time ever, that for-profit corporations have &ldquo;religious exercise&rdquo; rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In order to do so, Alito had to ignore common sense (for-profit corporations don&rsquo;t have religion), to say nothing of the clear historical record and explicit statutory language that RFRA was intended to return the state of the law to the era before the Supreme Court&rsquo;s 1990 decision in <em>Employment Division v. Smith </em>(which many believed undermined protection for religious minorities). In the face of all evidence, Alito argued, in Ginsburg&rsquo;s words, that RFRA was &ldquo;a bold initiative departing from, rather than restoring, pre-Smith jurisprudence.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In an effort reminiscent of the Supreme Court&rsquo;s &ldquo;applies only in this case&rdquo; approach to <em>Bush v. Gore</em>, Alito argued that his ruling was &ldquo;concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate&rdquo; and applied solely to closely held corporations.</p>
<p>Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn&rsquo;t let him get away with it, calling Alito&rsquo;s ruling &ldquo;a decision of startling breadth.&rdquo; Having created an entirely new legal avenue by which closely held for-profit companies (which includes about 90 percent of American businesses, hiring more than half of the nation&rsquo;s workforce) can try to evade regulation, Alito has undoubtedly generated excited activity in right-wing legal organizations who are likely to use the ruling to try to claim exemption from anti-discrimination laws for business owners that oppose homosexuality or gender equality, or perhaps for evangelical business owners who believe the Bible opposes minimum wage laws and collective bargaining. And he gave no limiting principle on extending RFRA to for-profit corporations, leaving open the question as to whether an enormous publicly-traded corporation like IBM or GE would also count as a &ldquo;person&rdquo; with religious liberty rights under RFRA.</p>
<p>Alito&rsquo;s insistence that the Court must accept the plaintiff&rsquo;s claim of &ldquo;substantial burden&rdquo; on religious free exercise based on their belief that some forms of contraception cause abortion &mdash;&nbsp;in spite of the consensus of the medical and scientific establishment to the contrary and Justice Ginsburg&rsquo;s explanation of why that belief does not translate into a &ldquo;substantial burden&rdquo;&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;was prefigured by an argument he made when working in the Office of Legal Counsel, where he helped write a memo arguing that, in spite of anti-discrimination provisions, employers in federally funded program could exclude people with AIDS regardless of whether or not their &ldquo;fear of contagion&rdquo; was reasonable.</p>
<p>Given that the Hobby Lobby case has been trumpeted by the right as a victory for &ldquo;religious liberty,&rdquo; it is worth noting that, in this year&rsquo;s 5-4 <em>Town of Greece</em> decision, Alito joined his conservative colleagues in a decision that showed little regard for the religious beliefs of citizens of minority faiths whose public town board meetings were consistently begun with sectarian prayers. During consideration of his nomination to the Supreme Court, the editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution had <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-12-19/news/0512190086_1_christian-nation-demagogues-secular-democracy">written</a> that Alito would be &ldquo;likely to further erode the protections that have kept the majority from imposing their religious views on the minority.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Alito also joined the Court&rsquo;s 5-4 majority in last year&rsquo;s <a href="http://blog.pfaw.org/content/voting-rights-decision-roberts-rewrites-15th-amendment">decision gutting the Voting Rights Act</a>, another long-pursued goal of the right-wing movement. &nbsp;That decision, in Shelby County v Holder, is another example of the step-by-step shift in the law being pursued by the conservative justices. Shelby was built in part on a 2009 Voting Rights Act decision in which the Court declined to vote on the constitutionality of the provisions they threw out in Shelby, but in which Chief Justice John Roberts included language about &ldquo;constitutional concerns&rdquo; that he would later cite in Shelby. Earlier in his career, Alito made clear that he disagreed with Court decisions that established the crucial &ldquo;one man, one vote&rdquo; principle that undergirds many voting rights protections.</p>
<p>As a Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito has demonstrated the traits of the right-wing movement from which he emerged: he denounces judicial activism while aggressively pursuing it; he is willing to twist laws, precedents, and established processes in order to advance his political goals; and he has often <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/justice_samuel_alito_why_he_s_so_rude.html">demonstrated contempt</a> for those who disagree with him, as when he rolled his eyes and shook his head while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent in the <em>Shelby County</em> case.</p>
<p>Much of the initial news coverage of the <em>Hobby Lobby</em> and <em>Harris </em>cases focused on the description of them by their author as being &ldquo;limited&rdquo; rather than &ldquo;sweeping&rdquo; in scope. That ignores the clear evidence from those cases, and from the record of the Roberts court, that Roberts and Alito are playing a long game. They have decades in which to relentlessly push the agenda that has been fostered by right-wing legal and political groups for the past four decades. Their one-step-after-another dismantling of campaign finance law, from <em>Citizens United</em> to <em>McCutcheon</em>, makes it clear that Roberts and Alito see the value of patience and of presenting a public image of restraint while carrying out a revolution. But a revolution they are pursuing, one in which the First Amendment&rsquo;s protections for religious freedom and free speech are <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2014/scotus_roundup/scotus_end_of_term_the_supreme_court_s_conservatives_are_using_the_first.html">manipulated</a> in the service of undermining religious liberty, the rights of workers, and the ability of the government to regulate corporate behavior.</p>
Peter MontgomeryC4John Roberts Koch BrothersSamuel Alito Supreme CourtSupreme CourtSupreme Court decisionsThe Federalist SocietyFederalist Society Fair and Just CourtsFighting the Right47459Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:18:00 -0400Supreme Court decisionsDangers Of Supreme Court Prayer Ruling Quickly Become Clearhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/dangers-supreme-court-prayer-ruling-quickly-become-clear-0
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<p><em>This post originally appeared on the <a href="http://blog.pfaw.org/content/dangers-supreme-court-prayer-ruling-quickly-become-clear">People For blog</a>.</em></p>
<p>Sometimes the damage from a bad court decision takes a while to make itself clear. Not so with <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/supreme-court-upholds-sectarian-prayer-official-meetings-religious-right-cheers">last week&rsquo;s U.S. Supreme Court ruling</a> upholding a town&rsquo;s practice of beginning council meetings with prayers that are overwhelmingly Christian. <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-sees-opportunity-supreme-court-prayer-ruling">Conservative political and legal groups called it a win for religious freedom</a>, but it only took a few days to see just how much unnecessary and divisive conflict the Court&rsquo;s decision could generate in communities across America.</p>
<p>Late last week the mayor of the New Jersey town of Carteret <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/05/11/prayer-controversy-cancels-naturalization-ceremony-in-new-jersey-town/">cited the Supreme Court ruling</a> to justify cancelling the use of the borough hall for a Saturday naturalization ceremony.&nbsp; He was upset that the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to allow the ceremony to begin with prayer. The INS <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/town-cancels-immigration-event-prayer-flap-23658213">says</a> its rules are meant to ensure that naturalization ceremonies are "conducted in a meaningful manner which is welcoming and inclusive and excludes political, commercial and religious statements." But Mayor Daniel Reiman said the INS could <a href="http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20140509/NJNEWS10/305090032/Federal-immigration-agency-defends-against-Carteret-prayer-controversy">"host its godless ceremony someplace else."</a> (It was held in Newark.)</p>
<p>What a sad object lesson for those aspiring American citizens and their friends and families. Who knows how many different faiths were represented among them? It shouldn&rsquo;t matter, because one of the most precious benefits of being an American is that your rights and standing as a citizen do not depend on your holding any particular set of religious beliefs.</p>
<p>But don&rsquo;t tell that to Al Bedrosian, a member of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors in Virginia. Last week after the Supreme Court ruling, Bedrosian declared that prayers to open board meetings should be given <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/05/town_of_greece_v_galloway_roanoke_virginia_already_seeing_the_effects_of.html">only by Christians</a>. It is shameful that Bedrosian holds public office in Virginia, home of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and the birthplace of the First Amendment. Bedrosian <a href="http://ww2.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-127460Al%20Bedrosian">argued publicly</a> several years ago that Christians should &ldquo;rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America.&rdquo; He said Christians &ldquo;are being fed lies that a Christian nation needs to be open to other religions&rdquo; and called it one of the &ldquo;greatest moments in US Senate history&rdquo; when a group of Christians disrupted a Hindu religious leader who was giving an opening prayer.</p>
<p>Both Reiman and Bedrosian are misinterpreting the Court&rsquo;s decision. But these episodes bring even greater clarity to a reality to which the conservative majority on the Supreme Court demonstrated &ldquo;blindness&rdquo; &ndash; in the words of dissenting Justice Elena Kagan. That is the exclusionary and divisive reality &ndash; as opposed to the theory &ndash; of government bodies opening their meetings with sectarian prayer.</p>
<p>The case decided by the Supreme Court came concerned the upstate New York town of Greece.&nbsp; For years, the town council has been inviting local clergy to open its meetings. Those clergy have been overwhelmingly Christian, and their prayers were sometimes highly sectarian, invoking &ldquo;the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross&rdquo; or &ldquo;the plan of redemption that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.&rdquo; These were not, as dissenting Justice Elena Kagan noted, ceremonial invocations like the &ldquo;God save the United States and this honorable Court,&rdquo; which begins Supreme Court sessions.</p>
<p>The town&rsquo;s prayer policy was challenged by two citizens (one Jew and one atheist) who felt coerced by the invitations to Christian prayer, and who felt as if they were being made outsiders in their own town based on their religious beliefs. They argued that the practice violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which has been interpreted as preventing the government from favoring religion in general or any religion in particular.</p>
<p>Some people, particularly those in the religious majority, have a hard time seeing why such prayer is a big deal. As <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/05/05/supreme-court-gets-it-wrong-on-state-sponsored-religion/">Paul Waldman writes for the <em>Washington Post</em></a>, &ldquo;the ruling is about the privilege of the majority, the privilege to define your own beliefs, traditions, and practices as simply the water in which we all swim. If you&rsquo;re in that majority, you tend to be shocked when anyone even questions whether those practices ought to be imposed on everyone and sponsored by the state.&rdquo;</p>
<p>But imagine, as Kagan did, a Muslim who has come before the city council seeking a zoning variance to build an addition on her home. When she is asked to join in prayer celebrating the divinity of Jesus, she has the option of not participating, or leaving the room. Either option identifies her as somehow different from her neighbors and from the councilmembers who will decide the fate of her request.&nbsp; A federal appeals court had ruled that the town&rsquo;s practice was unconstitutional because, even if town officials had no bad intent, the <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/09/symposium-the-puzzle-of-town-of-greece-v-galloway/">consequence</a> of the nearly uninterrupted parade of Christian prayers was to signal that Christianity was favored, and to make unequal citizens of people of other faiths or no faith.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, five Supreme Court justices disagreed, saying even an overwhelmingly Christian and sectarian prayer practice is OK unless there is a pattern of prayers denigrating other faiths or proselytizing or unless there is evidence that people are being legally coerced or punished for not participating. The Court has given a green light to &ldquo;Christian Nation&rdquo; advocates like Al Bedrosian to demand that their city council or county commission allow their official meetings to be regularly opened with explicitly Christian prayers.&nbsp; Some Religious Right leaders have said <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-sees-opportunity-supreme-court-prayer-ruling">that&rsquo;s exactly what they&rsquo;re going to do</a>.</p>
<p>Right now, practices vary. Some government bodies don&rsquo;t bother with prayer; others invite clergy to open meetings, with guidelines that prayers be respectful or nonsectarian. But even that nod toward pluralism is at risk: Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice said this ruling means government bodies can no longer make a distinction between nonsectarian prayer and &ldquo;praying in Jesus&rsquo; name&rdquo; and he told the Christian Broadcasting Network, &ldquo;that will have an impact on a number of cases.&rdquo;</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s worth noting that some progressive Christians agree that &ldquo;nonsectarian prayer&rdquo; is a kind of oxymoron. But, <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/get_prayer_out_of_the_churches050218.php">says</a> Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore, that is not a reason to push for sectarian prayer; it is instead a reason to do away with legislative prayer altogether. He writes that the effort to push more prayer in official settings is &ldquo;offensive to those who pray as much as to those who don&rsquo;t.&rdquo; The pro-church-state-separation Baptist Joint Committee had filed a brief in the case stating that &ldquo;prayer is an expression of voluntary religious devotion, not the business of government.&rdquo;</p>
<p>That brings us to a crucial distinction between what is constitutional and what is wise, particularly in a country that is increasingly diverse, with a growing number of people who claim no religious affiliation.&nbsp;As noted in People For the American Way Foundation&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/12-rules-mixing-religion-and-politics"><em>Twelve Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics</em>,</a> &ldquo;Some things that are legally permissible may still be damaging to religious tolerance and civic discourse, and should be discouraged.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The Supreme Court did not rule that legislative bodies have to begin their meetings with prayer; it ruled that the Constitution allows them to. In spite of Justice Anthony Kennedy&rsquo;s portrayal of legislative prayer as a unifying force, it <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/05/town_of_greece_v_galloway_the_supreme_court_upholds_sectarian_prayer_at.single.html">seems likely</a> that an aggressive push for more sectarian prayer to open official meetings will be anything but unifying. Elected officials should think twice before going down that road.</p>
<p>Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he prays that the Court is showing a way toward <a href="http://time.com/87969/on-prayer-supreme-court-upholds-freedom/">&ldquo;a right kind of free marketplace of faith expression in American life.&rdquo;</a> But Moore is wrong: we already have a free marketplace of faith expression in America. The First Amendment has fostered a vibrant, flourishing, peaceful religious pluralism that is unmatched anywhere in the world. Christian media has a massive presence on television, radio, and online. But what too many &ldquo;Christian Nation&rdquo; advocates want, and what the Court is opening the door to, is a system in which a religious majority can more easily use the institutions of government to promote its religious beliefs and label others as outsiders.</p>
<p>And that is not the American Way.</p>
Peter MontgomeryAl BedrosianChurch-StateDaniel ReimanReligious Libertyreligious persecution rhetoricRussell MooreSeparation between Church and StateSupreme CourtSupreme Court decisionsReligious Liberty46832Tue, 13 May 2014 12:37:40 -0400Supreme Court decisionsReligious Right Sees Opportunity In Supreme Court Prayer Rulinghttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-sees-opportunity-supreme-court-prayer-ruling
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<p>Religious Right groups are celebrating <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/supreme-court-upholds-sectarian-prayer-official-meetings-religious-right-cheers">yesterday&rsquo;s Supreme Court ruling upholding sectarian prayer at official public meetings</a> &ndash; like city council sessions &ndash; and <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/05/opinion-analysis-prayers-get-a-new-blessing/#more-209580">narrowly defining what would amount to unconstitutional religious coercion</a> of people attending.&nbsp;The case is <em>Town of Greece v. Galloway</em>.</p>
<p>Though divided on their reasoning, the Court&rsquo;s five conservative Justices upheld a practice in which, month after month, year after year, town leaders reached out to Christians and Christians only to offer opening prayers at town meetings, prayers that were often quite sectarian in nature.&nbsp; The very few exceptions were in response to this lawsuit.&nbsp; Although town leaders said that members of other religions could lead the opening prayer if they asked to, they had hardly let that be widely known, and they continued to reach out only to Christians.</p>
<p>SCOTUSblog&rsquo;s Lyle Denniston characterized the Court&rsquo;s ruling as <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/05/opinion-analysis-prayers-get-a-new-blessing/#more-209580">&ldquo;[s]topping just short of abandoning a historic barrier to religion in government activity.&rdquo;</a> Conservative and religious groups hostile to church-state separation are gushing over the ruling and hope it is a sign of more to come.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/organizations/becket-fund">Becket Fund</a> signaled that <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/togvictory/">it hopes yesterday&rsquo;s decision will just be the first step in further dismantling rulings upholding church-state separation</a>.&nbsp; From Deputy General Counsel Eric Rassbach:</p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;">&ldquo;The Court&rsquo;s landmark decision today echoes the wisdom of the Founders. Not only did the Court uphold the centuries-old practice of legislative prayer, it also started the work of bringing the entire law of church and state onto a firmer foundation in the words of the Constitution.&rdquo;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/7846/supreme_court_rules_sectarian_legislative_prayer_constitutional/">David Corman, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom</a>, which represented the Town of Greece:</p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;">&ldquo;Opening public meetings with prayer is a cherished freedom that the authors of the Constitution themselves practiced,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Speech censors should have no power to silence volunteers who pray for their communities just as the Founders did.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The American Family Association&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/bryan-fischer">Bryan Fischer</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD3zKeDXU5c">celebrated the ruling as a &ldquo;monster win&rdquo;</a> and said it was proof that &ldquo;we are fighting a winnable war,&rdquo; because the &ldquo;Supreme Court has ruled that you can have sectarian prayers, prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, to open any legislative session, any lawmaking body &ndash; a county commission can do it, a city council can do it, a state government can do it.&rdquo; &nbsp;</p>
<p>Fischer he went on at great length <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr6xWJW2OVk">endorsing</a> Justice Clarence Thomas&rsquo;s position that the First Amendment does not limit states&rsquo; constitutional right to, for example, declare the Southern Baptist Church to be the official state church and force people to support the church with taxes. &nbsp;Fischer, in fact, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD3zKeDXU5c">called</a> Thomas &ldquo;a stud on the issue of religious liberty.&rdquo; (Fischer says he wouldn&rsquo;t personally support coercive state establishment, but he supports Thomas&rsquo;s constitutional analysis, and says it should be applied to interpret that the federal government has no right to tell public schools whether and how prayer is permitted.) &nbsp;Fischer is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyhC1X2ZTu8">delighted</a> that the Supreme Court&rsquo;s majority decision discussed the fact that the Continental Congress opened with &ldquo;emphatically Christian&rdquo; prayer.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/gordon-klingenschmitt">Gordon Klingenschmitt</a>:</p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;"><a href="http://www.prayinjesusname.org/2014/05/victory-supreme-court-rules-5-4-jesus-prayers-are-ok/">Hallelujah!&nbsp;</a> Today YOU helped score a VICTORY at the U.S. Supreme Court, reaching the pinnacle of seven years of work and prayer with The Pray In Jesus Name Project.<br />
<br />
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it's OK for pastors to pray "in Jesus' name" at city council meetings.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/organizations/family-research-council">Family Research Council&rsquo;s</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/tony-perkins">Tony Perkins</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"<a href="http://www.frc.org/newsroom/us-supreme-court-prayer-ruling-momentous-victory-for-religious-liberty">The court today has upheld our first and most fundamental freedom</a>. The court has rejected the idea that as citizens we must check our faith at the entrance to the public square. We applaud the majority on the court for getting that right. This is an historic victory for all Americans of faith and for the common-sense reading of the Constitution itself. The Court's affirmation of the right of Americans to practice their faith in public life and the public square is a major win for the religious liberty we have always cherished.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/ralph-reed">Ralph Reed</a> of the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/organizations/faith-and-freedom-coalition">Faith and Freedom Coalition</a> called it a victory that would <a href="http://ffcoalition.com/blog/2014-05-05/faith-freedom-applauds-supreme-court-decision-voluntary-prayer">empower Religious Right activists to push elected officials to bring sectarian prayer into more official settings</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reed also announced that, armed with today&rsquo;s Supreme Court decision, Faith & Freedom Coalition would redouble its efforts to encourage opportunities for prayers offered at meetings by town boards, city councils, and county commissions nationwide.&nbsp; The organization has in the past mobilized public support for local officials who have allowed such prayers at government meetings.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Speech honoring God and invoking His blessing on our land should be welcomed, not treated with hostility,&rdquo; said Reed.&nbsp; &ldquo;With today&rsquo;s decision, the government officials that faith-based voters help to elect can provide a forum for such expressions without fear of being reversed by future courts.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/concerned-women-america">Concerned Women for America</a> <a href="http://www.cwfa.org/cwa-applauds-the-supreme-courts-legislative-prayer-decision/">celebrated</a>, saying the decision &ldquo;lifts up the best in our country.&rdquo; CWA President Penny Nance managed to slam what she said has been &ldquo;a push to establish atheism as the official religion of our land&rdquo; and claim that the Supreme Court&rsquo;s ruling was a win for everyone, &ldquo;even the staunchest atheists.&rdquo;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who object to these practices do not seek to exercise their religious liberty; they merely feel hostile towards other people&rsquo;s religious practices and seek to silence them. They seek to silence those with whom they disagree&hellip;.</p>
<p>The Founders of this great nation benefited and relied heavily on prayer to seek the guidance they needed to establish the foundations of our nation. When the first Congress met on September 7, 1774, it began with an amazing prayer &ldquo;in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Savior.&rdquo; No religious oppression or favoritism followed from that practice, only the blessings of freedom and liberty, including the freedom of religious thought, belief, or even non-belief.</p>
<p>Everyone wins, including the staunchest atheists, when we allow the free exercise of religion or non-religion according to a person&rsquo;s conscience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fox News pundit <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/todd-starnes">Todd Starnes</a>, who <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/todd-starnes-gets-definitively-debunked">specializes in promoting fictitious threats to religious freedom</a>, declared that &ldquo;the Obama administration has been waging a war against people of the Christian faith,&rdquo; somehow neglecting to mention that the Obama administration had actually weighed in on the side of the Town of Greece and its overwhelmingly Christian prayers. &nbsp;Starnes said it is <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/05/05/foxs-todd-starnes-invokes-hitler-to-attack-crit/199179">&ldquo;always a good day when the anti-Christian folks get smacked down by the Supreme Court&rdquo;</a> but said the fact that it was a 5-4 decision should be a &ldquo;wake-up call&rdquo; for Americans that elections matter.</p>
<p>Gary Bauer made the <a href="http://www.fggam.org/gary-bauer-religious-liberty-va-scandal-tears-murderers/">same point</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here's the good news: The Supreme Court today upheld public prayers, even Christian prayers, at government meetings in 5-to-4 decision.</p>
<p>But that is the bad news too! The free exercise of religion depends on just one vote&hellip;.</p>
<p>Now a win is a win. But don't miss the fact that this victory for religious liberty was won by the narrowest of margins. One more liberal appointment and the Supreme Court could easily ban prayers before town council meetings and legislative sessions. If that were to happen, our Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto would surely be next.</p>
<p>Your vote at the ballot box has a direct impact on our federal courts. Federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, are appointed (by the president) and confirmed (by the Senate) by the men and women we elect to public office.&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
Peter MontgomeryAlliance Defending FreedomAmerican Family Association Bryan FischerChurch-StateGordon Klingenschmitt Penny NanceRalph Reed Religious FreedomReligious Libertyreligious persecution rhetoricSeparation between Church and StateSupreme Court decisionsTony Perkins Town of Greece v GallowayBecket Fund Concerned Women for AmericaFaith and Freedom CoalitionFamily Research CouncilFox News Channel Religious Liberty46758Tue, 06 May 2014 12:38:25 -0400Supreme Court decisionsSupreme Court Upholds Sectarian Prayer At Official Meetings: Religious Right Cheershttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/supreme-court-upholds-sectarian-prayer-official-meetings-religious-right-cheers
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<p>In a 5-4&nbsp;<a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-696_4f57.pdf">decision</a>, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned a ruling by the Second Circuit appeals court and upheld the practice of an upstate New York town that begins its council meetings with prayers that are almost always given by Christian clergy. Religious Right groups are celebrating the ruling; Ralph Reed announced that his Faith and Freedom coalition would use the ruling to &ldquo;redouble its efforts&rdquo; to encourage more prayers at city and county government meetings. Both the decision and the Religious Right's responses are likely to invite more religiously divisive church-state conflicts.</p>
<p>Justice Clarence Thomas used his concurring opinion to argue, as he has before, that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment does not apply to the states at all; in other words, he believes there is no constitutional reason that a state cannot have an official religion. Fortunately, the decision in this case is far narrower than that.</p>
<p>It is, as Justice Stephen Breyer says in the opening sentence of his dissent, a &ldquo;fact-sensitive&rdquo; case. It did not revolve around the question of whether legislative prayer is unconstitutional &ndash; the Court has previously upheld legislative prayer in&nbsp;<em>Marsh v Chambers</em>&nbsp;&ndash; but in part whether the way clergy were invited to give prayers to open town council meetings was sufficiently inclusive. In Breyer&rsquo;s words,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;The question in this case is whether the prayer practice of the town of Greece, by doing too little to reflect the religious diversity of its citizens, did too much, even if unintentionally, to promote the &lsquo;political division along religious lines&rsquo; that &lsquo;was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect.&rsquo;&rdquo; [quoting from the Court&rsquo;s 1971 decision in Lemon v Kurtzman]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also at issue was whether a town council meeting, at which members of the public are appealing to councilmembers for specific action, is more susceptible to being a coercive environment than a prayer given by a chaplain to a group of lawmakers about to start their legislative day. For example, the council hears debates on individual applications from residents and business owners seeing zoning permits and other licenses. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan recognizes that the Court has upheld the historical tradition of legislative prayer, but writes that the town hall meetings in Greece are a kind of hybrid, &ldquo;occasions for ordinary citizens to engage with and petition their government, often on highly individualized matters.&rdquo; That, she says, requires special care that each member of the community is respected as an equal citizen, something the Town of Greece has not done.</p>
<p>While the plaintiffs in the Town of Greece case did not argue that town leaders were motivated by religious bias, they argued that the selection process led almost exclusively to prayers being given by Christian ministers, and to prayers that were not just ceremonial invocations but quite explicitly sectarian. Kagan writes that town meetings need not be religion-free zones, saying that &ldquo;pluralism and inclusion in a town hall can satisfy the constitutional requirement of neutrality,&rdquo; but concluded that the board of the Town of Greece did nothing to recognize religious diversity, and that its practice &ldquo;does not square with the First Amendment&rsquo;s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government.&rdquo; She offers a hypothetical of a Muslim resident coming before the board to see a zoning variance to build an addition on her home:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;But just before she gets to say her piece, a minister deputized by the Town asks her to pray &lsquo;in the name of God&rsquo;s only son Jesus Christ.&rsquo; She must think &ndash; it is hardly paranoia, but only the truth&mdash;that Christian worship has become entwined with local governance. And now she faces a choice&mdash;to pray alongside the majority as one of that group or somehow to register her deeply felt difference&hellip;.She does not wish to be rude to her neighbors, nor does she wish to aggravate the Board members whom she will soon be trying to persuade. And yet she does not want to acknowledge Christ&rsquo;s divinity, any more than many of her neighbors would want to deny that tenet. So assume she declines to participate with the others in the first act of the meeting&mdash;or even, as the majority proposes, that she sands up and leaves the room altogether&hellip;At the least, she becomes a different kind of citizen, one who will not join in the religious practice that the Town Board has chosen as reflecting its own and the community&rsquo;s most cherished beliefs. And she thus stands at a remove, based solely on religion, from her fellow citizens and her elected representatives.</p>
<p>Everything about that situation, I think, infringes the First Amendment&hellip;That the Town Board selects, month after month and year after year, prayergivers who will reliably speak in the voice of Christianity, and so places itself behind a single creed. That in offering those sectarian prayers, the Board&rsquo;s chosen clergy members repeatedly call on individuals, prior to participating in local governance, to join in a form of worship that may be at odds with their own beliefs. That the clergy thus put some residents to the unenviable choice of either pretending to pray like the majority or declining to join its communal activity, at the very moment of petitioning their elected leaders. That the practice thus divides the citizenry, creating one class that shares the Board&rsquo;s own evident religious beliefs and another (far smaller) class that does not. And that the practice also alters a dissenting citizen&rsquo;s relationship with her government, making her religious difference salient when she seeks only to engage her elected representatives as would any other citizen.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kagan writes that the Court majority opinion reflected &ldquo;two kinds of blindness.&rdquo; First, it missed the difference between traditional legislative prayer and the setting of the town council, a difference she described as a &ldquo;chasm,&rdquo; and the fact that the prayers in Greece are mostly addressed to the public rather than lawmakers. She said the majority &ldquo;changes the subject&rdquo; rather than addressing the sectarian content of the prayers delivered in Greece, such as those invoking &ldquo;the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross&rdquo; or &ldquo;the plan of redemption that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.&rdquo; These are not, as she says, the recitation of &ldquo;God save the United States and this honorable Court&rdquo; invoked at the beginning of Supreme Court sessions.</p>
<p>Kagan cites George Washington&rsquo;s well-known letter to the Newport Hebrew Congregation, in which he assured members of that congregation that the First Amendment does not simply tolerate people of minority faiths, rather all possess the same &ldquo;immunities of citizenship.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Writes Kagan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me, that remarkable guarantee means at least this much: When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as members of one faith or another. And that means that even in a partly legislative body, they should not confront government-sponsored worship that divides them along religious lines. I believe, for all the reasons I have given, that the Town of Greece betrayed that promise. I therefore respectfully dissent from the Court&rsquo;s decision.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Breyer also joined Kagan&rsquo;s dissent, as did Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. The case is&nbsp;<em>Town of Greece v. Galloway</em>.</p>
Peter MontgomeryChurch-StateRalph Reed Religious LibertySeparation between Church and StateSupreme Court decisionsC3Faith and Freedom CoalitionReligious Liberty46742Mon, 05 May 2014 15:08:38 -0400Supreme Court decisionsGay Legislator Blocked from Speaking in 'Rebellion Against God's Law'http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gay-legislator-blocked-speaking-rebellion-against-god-s-law
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<p>Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Sims, an openly gay legislator, was <a href="http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/56656">blocked</a> from speaking on the floor of the state House on Wednesday by a colleague who believed Sims&rsquo; plans to speak about the U.S. Supreme Court&rsquo;s marriage decision would be in "open rebellion against God&rsquo;s law.&rdquo;</p>
<p>According to WHYY, Rep. <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/daryl-metcalfe">Daryl Metcalfe</a> raised a procedural objection to stop Sims from speaking during a part of the House session in which legislators often give wide-ranging remarks.</p>
<p>"I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God's law," said Metcalfe, R-Butler.</p>
<p>Metcalf is a far-right legislator who has sponsored a marriage <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pennsylvania-republican-introduces-amendment-ban-gay-marriage">amendment </a>to the state&rsquo;s Constitution and &ldquo;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/birther-bill-advances-arizona-introduced-pennsylvania">birther</a>&rdquo; legislation, and called for <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/schlafly-overturn-birthright-citizenship-just-we-overturned-dred-scott">overturning </a>birthright citizenship under the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment in order to &ldquo;bring an end to the illegal alien invasion.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Sims, who said he appreciated the apologies and support he received from other Republican members of the House, has <a href="http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/56681-sims-calls-for-censure-over-gods-law-?linktype=hp_topstory">asked</a> the legislature to reprimand Metcalfe for his comments.&nbsp;</p>
Peter MontgomeryAnti-GayChurch-StateDaryl MetcalfeFree SpeechMarriage EqualityPennsylvaniaSeparation of Church and StateSupreme CourtSupreme Court decisionsFighting the RightFreedom of SpeechReligious Liberty43525Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:46:33 -0400Supreme Court decisionsTony Perkins Cheers Gutting of Voting Rights Acthttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tony-perkins-cheers-gutting-voting-rights-act
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<p>While civil rights leaders are denouncing the 5-4 Supreme Court decision <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/press-releases/2013/06/pfaw-foundation-court-conservatives-shelby-county-v-holder-deal-terrible-blow">gutting</a> the Voting Rights Act, the Family Research Council&rsquo;s Tony Perkins is <a href="http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/the-right-vote-on-voting-rights">cheering</a>. &nbsp;In an email alert sent at the end of the day on Tuesday, Perkins says, &ldquo;With help from the U.S. Supreme Court, America may finally be turning a page on the racial politics that have haunted our last 50 years.&rdquo; &nbsp;Oh, yes, giving a green light to the kind of blatantly discriminatory voter disenfranchisement efforts that we&rsquo;ve seen in recent elections is certainly going to help America &ldquo;turn the page&rdquo; on racial politics.</p>
<p>Like other Religious Right leaders, Perkins loves to denounce &ldquo;judicial activism&rdquo; when judges uphold reproductive choice or legal equality for LGBT people. But he happily embraces this ruling in which a narrow Court majority rejected a huge bipartisan congressional vote that reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006 on a matter in which the Constitution specifically and intentionally gives Congress wide discretion. Perkins complains that &ldquo;Congress insisted on reauthorizing a Voting Rights Act that was rooted in one of the darkest chapters of U.S. history.&rdquo; And he claims that &ldquo;In recent days, the Voting Rights Act has been a tool for a liberal and politically-motivated DOJ to shape laws to its advantage.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Perkins seems deeply concerned about &ldquo;the red tape of the Voting Rights Act&rdquo; that he said has been &ldquo;unnecessarily handcuffing&rdquo; states whose history of disenfranchisement meant that they had to have changes in voting procedures pre-approved by the Justice Department or by a three-judge District Court in the District of Columbia.&nbsp;In contrast, Perkins seems utterly unconcerned about more recent voter disenfranchisement campaigns waged by the GOP and its allies.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Perkins cites Chief Justice John Roberts&rsquo; disingenuous suggestion that the court was not acting in a way that would encourage discriminatory disenfranchisement. "Our decision in no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting," Roberts insisted. "Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions."</p>
<p>Is there anyone who thinks Roberts and Perkins actually want the federal-government-hating Tea Party Republicans who are calling the shots in the House of Representatives to support the creation of a new formula that would subject more states to federal oversight?&nbsp; Perkins makes his thoughts on that point abundantly clear with this comment about the Justice Department: &ldquo;And in an administration as corrupt as President Obama's is proving to be, the less power it has over the states, the better!&rdquo;</p>
Peter MontgomerySupreme CourtSupreme Court decisionsTony Perkins Voting RightsVoting Rights ActFamily Research CouncilFighting the RightThe Right to Vote43475Tue, 25 Jun 2013 22:38:16 -0400Supreme Court decisions